Prime ministers and presidents are routinely afforded four or five-year tenures but football's addiction to short-termism dictates that its often authoritarian chairmen tend to abide by very different rules.

The game is a parallel universe in which Vincent Tan, Cardiff's owner, seems capable of making Vladimir Putin appear the wettest of liberals and, after only three years in charge of Newcastle United, Alan Pardew is the Premier League's second longest-serving manager behind Arsenal's Arsène Wenger.

Pardew appreciates the absurdity of an existence in which such comparative longevity provokes anxiety as well as pride. "I see it as a source of danger," he says. "There's a little bit of pride but it's also a little bit worrying. I've been vulnerable from day one here and I'm still vulnerable."

In another walk of life Newcastle's manager may appear to be talking fluent paranoia but he is working in a league which, already this season, has seen Paolo Di Canio, Ian Holloway, Martin Jol, Steve Clarke and André Villas-Boas leave their positions.

Despite Cardiff reaching the Premier League and looking capable of staying there under Mackay's assured guidance, control of player recruitment played a key part in his civil war with Tan. Pardew sympathises. Like increasing numbers of Premier League peers, he fronts an often awkwardly uneasy coalition "government" at Newcastle infinitely more ruthless than any alliance depicted in Borgen.

While the gargantuan financial costs of relegation – leading accountancy firms gauge it at around £50m in lost revenue – to the Championship explains many apparently knee-jerk sackings, the fashion for management hierarchies featuring directors of football brings often fraught politics into the equation.

On Tyneside, Pardew does not merely need to handle millionaire players and Mike Ashley, the club's autocratic, often eccentric, owner but Joe Kinnear, arguably the game's most unorthodox director of football. As Newcastle's manager – now set for a European challenge but depicted as "a dead man walking" two months ago – puts it: "The old joke says you can't keep all the people happy all the time; well I can't keep any of the people happy any of the time."

If it is a testament to his consummate political skills that Pardew is good at promoting contentment, Villas-Boas could not quite pull off a similar feat at Tottenham Hotspur. After initially championing Franco Baldini's appointment as technical director, he was reportedly unhappy with some of the seven signings Baldini helped secure as Spurs strove to fill a Gareth Bale sized gap.

Paolo Di Canio had man-management issues at Sunderland but, since his dismissal, he has complained that he did not choose any of the 13 summer arrivals, 12 imported from abroad, recruited by Roberto De Fanti, the Wearside club's director of football. "It's very difficult to bring in so many new faces and make it gel," Pardew says.

Unfortunately football is a "results business" and few chairmen appear prepared to play the long game. This partly reflects a wider cultural shift which has seen banks and hedge funds increasingly buying into clubs and making short-term results a priority over even medium-term gains. The idea of a manager sticking around for 27, 17 and 11 years respectively like Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Wenger and David Moyes with Everton looks hopelessly outdated.

"Clubs want instant success and have a short-term focus on first-team results," says Richard Bevan, the chief executive of the League Managers Association. "But perhaps it's no coincidence that three of the current top five longest serving managers – Wenger [Arsenal], Russell Slade [Leyton Orient] and Chris Wilder [Oxford United] – are top of their respective leagues. Here are three clubs with vastly different resources proving that, over time, success can be achieved with continuity and stability.

"What I think would be of benefit is for everyone in the game to take a step back and actually define success. In simple terms, success is winning a trophy, winning the league or gaining promotion. For a number of clubs this will always be an unrealistic expectation."

What he describes as "the drastic turnover of managers" worries Bevan who must fear 2013-14's eventual tally of Premier League exits will exceed the record of nine.

"For the overall benefit and future development of the game, the situation must change," he says. "It's almost a case of 'it can't get any worse'. However what shows no sign of decreasing is the financial reward of reaching the Premier League, maintaining Premier League status and reaching the Champions League. With so much at stake financially, this has to be one of the key factors in the current volatility."

Not that changing managers necessarily works. If Mauricio Pochettino's installation paid dividends at Southampton last season, Harry Redknapp and Nigel Adkins failed to deliver QPR and Reading from relegation.

Sceptics might say it was ever thus. When Len Shackleton, the gifted Sunderland and England inside-forward, penned his autobiography in 1956, he famously entitled one chapter "The Average Director's knowledge of football". It comprised a blank page.